Typically, an electronic system includes a number of integrated circuit chips that communicate with one another to perform system applications. Often, the electronic system includes a controller, such as a micro-processor, and one or more memory chips, such as random access memory (RAM) chips. The controller communicates with the memory to store data and to read the stored data.
The RAM chips can be any suitable type of RAM, such as dynamic RAM (DRAM) including single data rate synchronous DRAM (SDR-SDRAM), double data rate SDRAM (DDR-SDRAM), graphics DDR-SDRAM (GDDR-SDRAM), low power SDR-SDRAM (LPSDR-SDRAM), and low power DDR-SDRAM (LPDDR-SDRAM). Also, the RAM chips can be any suitable generation of memory including fourth generation DDR-SDRAM (DDR4-SDRAM), fifth generation GDDR-SDRAM (GDDR5-SDRAM), and higher generations of memory. Usually, each new generation of memory operates at an increased clock speed and/or an increased data rate from the previous generation.
During the manufacturing process, multiple memory devices are typically fabricated on a single silicon wafer and undergo some form of testing (commonly referred to as wafer or “front-end” test) before the devices are separated and packaged individually. Such testing typically entails writing test data patterns to a particular series of address locations, reading data back from the same address locations, and comparing the data patterns read back to the data patterns written, in order to verify device operation. If the data read from a memory cell does not match the previously written data, the memory cell fails. Such failing memory cells may be identified during the test and replaced with redundant memory cells.